


Definition

by SLWalker



Series: Arch to the Sky [62]
Category: due South
Genre: Arch to the Sky, Chicago (1998), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>June 1998: A stakeout, and pieces of history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Definition

**Regina, Saskatchewan, 1991**

 _When he first looked into the mirror on the day of his graduation, he could summon up no pride, no sense of accomplishment, nothing but an exhausted, grim determination to get through the rest of the day just like he had gotten through the past twenty-four weeks._

 _It was only after his sister gave him a stuffed husky as a joke and a hug, later that night when all was over and quiet, that everything came down on him at once. One simple act of warmth and affection from someone he could trust was all it took. And he shattered there, sobbing every single clawing struggle to get through Depot into her shoulder._

 _The next day, getting everything ready to go... that was when he could first look at his newly earned uniform with pride._  
\--

 

 **Chicago, Illinois, 1998**

"I drew stakeout duty. Great way to spend a weekend," Ray said, about five minutes into the drive, lifting his hand to gesture against the steering wheel. "Sittin' in a car, watching a building, recording who comes and who goes and when, pure excitement, lemme tell you..."

The words apparently startled Turnbull out of whatever train of thought he had fallen into, though he wasn't quite so jumpy as to bash his head on the roof anymore. He just looked over from where he'd been peering out the window. "The Simpson case?"

"Yeah." Ray grinned a little bit, stopping at the light and looking over himself. "No arrests to be made, unless something goes real bad, just record and observe for four hours."

"Indeed. I wish you luck on your stakeout, Detective." Turnbull nodded, then looked back out the window again. There was the vaguest little expression of _something_ on his face.

Ray took it as bait. "You ever sit on a stakeout?"

"Not exactly, unless you consider sitting off of the highway to run radar, attempting to catch that menace known as the 'speeder,' a stakeout. I suppose it was, of a sort."

"Close enough." Ray said, shaking his head with a chuckle. "Both of those mean hours and hours of boredom."

"Indeed. Though, likewise, they allowed for the occasional fishing expedition."

Ray swung a look over, raising both eyebrows, then looked back at the road again. "You went fishin'?"

"Yes, Detective." Okay, yeah. Turnbull was grinning; Ray could hear it in his voice. It always kinda pleased Ray a little when he could provoke it -- it seemed, once you managed to get Turnbull to grin, he would mellow out a little. At least, he'd be a whole lot less likely to go and break anything, or bash himself off of anything.

"Ever get anything good?"

"Occasionally, yes."

Ray nodded again, pulling up to the curb outside of Turnbull's apartment building. "So, what're you doin' tomorrow? Since it's your day off and all. Got any plans?"

The Mountie got out of the car, his expression sort of good-naturedly blank, then leaned his forearms on the window frame to talk with Ray. Both of his eyebrows went up slightly, but there was some measure of something else in that look, and Ray realized right about then that he was being _teased_. Which probably shouldn't have shocked him any, since he was gonna ask anyway, but it still did a little.

"Apparently, Detective Vecchio, I'm going fishing."

And Ray grinned back.

 

\--  
 **Nipawin, Saskatchewan, 1995**

 _He stared down at the hole in the ice for so long that he didn't even realize anyone else was there until his commanding officer took him by his upper arms and pulled him away from the railing._  
\--

 

 **Chicago, Illinois, 1998**

"Wow, you wear real clothes?"

That just got a kind of baffled, somewhat blushy look in answer. Which made Ray huff a little laugh. He guessed that Turnbull had no particular clue how to respond to it, and therefore, opted for silent bafflement as he got into the Riv and buckled up.

"So, you wanna grab some dinner before we go sit for hours?" Ray asked, as he pulled the Riv away from the curb and turned at the corner. "'Cause I don't know about you, but I'm kinda hungry."

"I-- I've already had dinner, Detective, but thank you for the offer."

Even in jeans and a medium gray t-shirt, Turnbull was still wearing his boots. Ray kinda wondered why -- he'd had to wear Benny's once, and they weren't all that comfortable. Too slick in the soles. Then again, neither Fraser nor Turnbull seemed to have any trouble running in them, so maybe it was something that came with practice.

"Okay. I'll just grab some snacks, then. Get you a bottle of water?"

"That-- you don't--"

"I know I don't gotta, but it's a bottle of _water_ , Renfield. I'm not gonna break the bank on a bottle of water."

Turnbull turned a little red again, went to say something, fell quiet, then nodded. "All... all right, thank you."

"Anytime," Ray said, with a half-shrug and a half-smile to go with.

 

\--  
 **Nipawin, Saskatchewan, 1995**

 _"This isn't the end, Constable."_

 _Staff Sergeant Severn was a good commanding officer; tolerant, mostly, and reasonably patient. From the very first to, apparently, the very last._

 _The worst part of this was that he understood why._

 _"Yes, sir."_

 _Severn looked up from his desk, eyebrows drawn up some. The look was painful. "Maybe some time off of the road..." His voice trailed off, and his mouth tightened to a straight line._

 _"Yes, sir."_

 _They stood in silence for long moments, and then Severn slid the paper across the desk. "Here are some of the open assignments. Nothing in Ontario, I'm afraid, but some of those are excellent postings. I've spent some time in Vancouver, and you would likely feel right at home there."_

 _"Sir."_

 _Severn must have understood, then. "Dismissed. And Renfield..."_

 _He kept the wince off his face._

 _"...you'll be missed."_

 _The second worst part was wanting to believe that._  
\--

 

 **Chicago, Illinois, 1998**

Stakeouts were often boring, and usually filled with chatter, but neither of them could seem to get into any kind of empty chatter, even when they tried. Random conversation about the weather tapered off quick, neither of them followed the same sports most of the time, and that usually meant a lot of silence. When they did manage to get going on a topic, though, even a light one... it never felt idle. It felt like some kind of accomplishment or something.

Watching people coming and going from a building and noting all known and unknown players should have been more boring than it was, given how much was conducted in silence, but it was a shockingly comfortable kinda silence, and Ray was slowly starting to appreciate how much could be said _without_ words.

Turnbull really was a lot sharper than people gave him credit for. He had good eyes, good hearing and really good observational skills -- he could sit with a book of mug shots on his lap and pick out the features of someone barely in view from quite a distance, then match them up. Might have been something to do with the art thing he'd mentioned a few days ago.

"How do you do that, anyway?" Ray asked, after the sixth guy had been identified, crosschecked on the list of known suspects, and noted down into their surveillance log.

"Ah-- there are-- that is to say, I've spent--" He did that a lot. Seemed to lose his place in his thoughts like losing a bookmark out of a novel, and then had to try to find which page he'd been looking at. Ray was starting to get, though, that it wasn't for a lack of thought. Perhaps more for having a lot of thoughts and sometimes getting mixed up in them. The more flustered, the more mixed up.

Turnbull closed his eyes for a moment, sighing out, then went back to peering out the windshield at the building. "I'm not entirely certain. I've often observed people, so perhaps it's helped with my visual recognition skills."

"Yeah? I do it with noses." Ray nodded, looking back out again. "No two noses are the same. I can recognize a sniffer at fifty paces with one eye closed." He grinned a little. "Might be 'cause mine takes up so much of my face."

He saw the grin and the head-shake in his peripheral vision. "I-- there is nothing wrong with your nose, Detective."

"Well, no. 'Course not. But you gotta admit, when you got one this size, you have _experience_."

"I hardly believe that the size of your nose directly relates to your visual recognition of the noses of others. That would be selling your own particular visual recognition skills short."

"Did you just compliment me? 'Cause if you keep complimentin' me, I'm gonna have to take you along on these adventures more often. It does wonders for my self-esteem." Ray was teasing, but it was half of an offer, too. He wasn't even sure why. But he _liked_ Turnbull, stammering and accident-proneness and all. There was something unassuming and... well, sweet, for lack of a better word about the guy, and these days, Ray appreciated that kind of quality more than ever.

"I believe I did, yes."

"That mean you'll ride with me tomorrow?"

That got a bit of a gaping, wide-eyed look. Ray didn't stop watching for more people entering that building, but he could catch it out of the corner of his eye, and it made him grin wider.

"Purely for the sake of self-esteem."

"I-- that is-- I would be--" A pause. A breath. "Yes, Detective Vecchio."

"I mean, it's not exciting like this," Ray said, casually. "Just tryin' to track down a few leads and that. Sit here tomorrow night for another four hours. Keep fishing, y'know?"

"Ah-- ...yes."

It was right around there that Ray realized it wasn't for his own self-esteem that he offered it.

 

\--  
 **Chicago, Illinois, 1995**

 _Benton Fraser was the epitome of what a Mountie was supposed to be, and further was a man of moral character to have stood against the silent red wall, and he would have gone to quite a number of lengths to gain the man's respect. For that matter, he was willing to go to some lengths to even gain the man's acknowledgment as another living being, let alone a fellow officer. At that point, he needed a hero. So, he transferred to Chicago._

 _It didn't help that the first thing that happened on his transfer was a meeting with Inspector Thatcher, who made certain to let him know exactly what she thought of him, his recent record and his transfer to her consulate. She had him so flustered that there followed an incident with thumb-tacks off of his new desk, and that was nearly his head on a platter._

 _It wasn't the first time he'd come under such cutting verbal abuse, but he was flashing back to Depot for the rest of the day, and then she mercifully left for a conference, and then there was the incident with Gerrard, and by then, he was convinced that he'd just about hopelessly ruined their first impressions of him._

 _Those mattered, and from there, it felt like he was constantly trying to crawl back out of the hole._

 _By the end of it, he would have been satisfied with just looking in a mirror and not feeling like the man looking back at him was hopelessly, irredeemably incompetent._  
\--

 

 **Chicago, Illinois, 1998**

"Okay, that was weird."

"...yes."

"You'd think if he was gonna go without panty-hose, he woulda shaved his legs. Or waxed."

Turnbull flicked a look over at Ray that made Ray wanna laugh. Utterly baffled.

"What?" Ray asked, and he finally did laugh a little, noting it down on the surveillance log. "Not my scene, but Benny at least went all out when he did the drag thing. Made a pretty good woman."

Yeah. That got a lot of gaping shock. Like he'd just thrown a brick of 'what the...?' at Turnbull's head. Ray felt decidedly accomplished for that. "Constable Fraser-- he--"

"Definitely wore hose. I dunno if he shaved or not, though."

"--he... in women's clothing..."

"Yeah." Ray was outright laughing now, trying hard not to lose sight of the door they were watching. "It was for an undercover gig, so you can close your mouth now."

Turnbull obediently closed his mouth, then opened it again, then closed it again, blinking rapidly. Ray shook his head, tapering off to giggles for a moment before sighing out. That had felt good. Real good.

"That rather does explain the wig I found in one of the storage boxes. As well as the heels." Turnbull shook his head. "I would have expected Constable Fraser to choose a more suitable color than _auburn_ , however, given his fastidiousness in other venues."

Ray shook his head. "Yeah, well, he ever comes back down from the frozen North, I'll go get him something more natural."

"This was one of your cases he was assisting with?"

"Yeah. He was helpin' me find out some stuff for a friend, and none of the women I knew would go in. So he showed up, all decked out like a lady, and did it for me."

Turnbull nodded, slowly. There was a long silence, and then he said, "I-- you do realize that if you ever asked me--"

"Hey, I didn't ask him, he volunteered!"

"--the response I would give would be, 'Never.'"

It was Ray's turn to stare for a long moment, and he did.

He was still grinning wide when he looked back at the building.

 

\--  
 **Toronto, Ontario, 1998**

 _The spring rain came down in torrents, and he didn't move. No stetson, no jacket. Just rain on an old hockey jersey, over bandages and gauze. His head ached, still, though not quite so badly as it had -- the goose-egg he'd gotten when he hit pavement was mostly gone._

 _The grave still looked entirely fresh._

 _He blinked the water out of his eyes, just standing still. No tears, this time. He felt tired, and he felt grimly determined, and he felt lost, all at once. His ill-fated attempt to follow in his father's footsteps fared no better than his ill-fated attempt to follow in Fraser's. He was neither a politician, nor was he some larger-than-life epitome of the frontier Mountie._

 _It left him wondering what he was._

 _He had not known that answer for a very long time._

 _For now, at least, he was going back to Chicago. He had his assignment there to finish out. He had his hard-earned uniform. It was something. He didn't know what he was, but he was no longer going to let anyone else define it._

 _Renfield Turnbull reached out and rested a hand on his father's gravestone, took a deep breath, and then turned around to walk out of the cemetery._  
\--

 

 **Chicago, Illinois, 1998**

"So, tomorrow?" Ray asked, eyebrows up. Just confirming.

"Perhaps someone will take the bait." Turnbull leaned again with his arms on the window frame, smiling a little half-smile.

"Sure, if we follow our noses."

That got a little chuckle, and Turnbull shook his head some. "Indeed."

Ray nodded. There was a beat, and then he said, "Hey, thanks for coming with me tonight."

"It was no trouble-- that is, you're very welcome." Turnbull stood up straight, tapping on the roof of the Riv with his knuckles lightly. "Have a good night, Detective."

"I will. Hey, Ren?"

That got the Mountie to look back down, a vague look of confusion and uncertainty. "Uh... yes, Detective?"

"Can I pick you up for dinner first?"


End file.
